Details about Jill Jones’ latest book, Screens Jets Heaven: New & SelectedPoems from Salt Publishing
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Jill JonesThe reborn
There’s a rumble, an exit storm, though for days the house has been quiet. Two years since he was shot, see outside there, where they planted the olive. She believes he is reborn and she searches faces for his eyes – as if it was a sad accident. That’s not what the neighbourhood rides with. We say we got the dirt and maybe it’s so. We’re the big band of rumour – pow, pow – we got the beat on bruisings and the junk trade, the muscles for pain and the cops wink. All that rap at the corner shop, the kiddy exchanges with smokes, and milk and the headlines. This was always the news about his muscle and deal, but she believes like a mother, like the unforgiving ground as she saw him go down. What is taken, not forgotten. So, easy to talk and so we must, that it goes round, spins and hustles – ching, ching, ching – while she keeps the black watch. We don’t touch that and we cannot go with it. Our chorus is banal as the next exit storm when boys roar in, then the gate clangs and they retreat out somewhere. We chime in because we know. And we are doing it again.
The skim
Warnings that I walk through
the hassle at the station
the boredom at the counter
chill before I step down.
The day that is saturated
the harbour that is bruised
wavelands of graffiti
and movements of poetry.
The urging and the following
the exceptions and excuses
knuckles in the pockets
and the yellow curse.
Tunnels that enclose
the languages we swallow
the return that I wait for
whoever got there first.
Windows that are flying
the street that rises slowly
rain shine I walk through
blue breaking up the clouds.
The safety that I pray for
the water of thy skin.
